Prior to the 2023 Draft, the head of the WWE creative team Triple H announced that a new World Heavyweight Championship is coming to grace the roster. Then during the draft, it was determined that the Raw brand will exclusively get to hold that new title belt since the undisputed WWE universal champion Roman Reigns was drafted to SmackDown. We now also know who will compete for that title.
In an official statement on their website, WWE has now revealed the 12 Superstars who will be participating in this coming tournament for the World Heavyweight Championship, commencing from this week’s Raw,
– Seth Rollins
– Shinsuke Nakamura
– Sheamus
– The Miz
– Damian Priest
– Edge
– Rey Mysterio
– Finn Balor
– Bobby Lashley
– AJ Styles
– Austin Theory (United States Champion)
– Cody Rhodes
Format of the World Heavyweight Championship tournament
During the Backlash 2023 press conference in San Juan, this past Friday afternoon, Triple H also revealed the format of the tournament via which the new World Heavyweight Championship tournament will function. On tonight’s Raw, two Triple Threat Matches will take place and the winners of these matches will compete in the main event of the show.
Then on Friday’s SmackDown, two more such Triple Threat Matches will take place and the winners of these matches will compete in the main event of the show. Then the winner from the Raw side and the winner from the Smackdown side will collide in the tournament final at the Night Of Champions premium live event in Saudi Arabia on May 27th to finally determine the new holder of the World Heavyweight Championship belt.
Sean Sapp gave several spoilers on the creative plans for tonight’s May 8 episode of WWE Raw and revealed that the tournament around the World Heavyweight Championship will mostly consume the post-Backlash episode,
“We’re told that the World Heavyweight Title tournament was scheduled to take up a ‘significant’ portion of WWE Raw as things stood on Sunday. They plan on having the title belt ringside presented as it has appeared on TV in recent weeks. Seth Rollins, Cody Rhodes, Shinsuke Nakamura, The Miz, Finn Balor and Damian Priest are planned for Monday’s tournament.”
As revealed earlier, the favorites to win the new World Heavyweight Championship have already been revealed and Seth Rollins remains in the odds-on favorite position to win the belt. There’s no update on who he will go up against in the tournament.
